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It’s a heck of a way to run a pre-election campaign. On the eve of an expected election, politicians usually spend their time playing up good news, downplaying the bad, shaking hands and kissing babies.

Wedding Tales: Gamble pays off in love and marriage

Newlyweds Jenn and Brandon Haig.

Photograph by: Charyssa Shippit

EDMONTON - What Jenn McLaughlin feared most about being in a relationship with Brandon Haig was losing him forever as a friend.

What if it didn’t work out? What if they wound up hating each other?

In the end, she decided it was worth the risk.

Ironically, he seemed unaware of her existence when they first met through mutual friends in January 2009.

“He had been to a show at Rexall Place and needed a ride home from friends,” recalls Jen, 21. “So I tagged along. When we got there, he climbed in the back seat with me and the whole way home I tried talking to him. He would either ignore me or give me a one-word answer.”

Her friends assured her he wasn’t indifferent but shy, and that he would “come around.”

He did, and in a big way. It wasn’t long before Brandon began showing up wherever Jenn was. When she left, he left. It was obvious to her and everyone around them that he was head over heels. After a while, even he couldn’t deny it any longer.

For her part, Jenn only saw him as a friend and told him so many times over, and anyone else who would listen. Despite that, they became best friends. It was rare to see one without the other.

It was only after a conversation with her mom nearly a year later, in December that year, that Jenn started to see Brandon differently, and to understand how unique and special their relationship was.

“She said: ‘You have dated all the wrong guys, and here’s one who’s willing to do anything for you and you won’t even give him a chance,’” recalls Jenn.

It was the perspective she needed. Days later, she decided to close her eyes and jump.

“I finally said to him: ‘Are you going to ask me out or what?’”

He did, of course, practically immediately. And almost as quickly she got cold feet. Panic-stricken, she called him to come over for a talk, determined to tell him they couldn’t be more than just friends. When she opened the door to let him in, though, she couldn’t for the life of her remember any of the arguments she had in her head.

“I totally forgot why I was having second thoughts,” she says.

Things moved very quickly after that. Very quickly — six months later, in June, 2010, they found out they were going to become parents. They decided to go ahead with a planned trip to Ontario to visit her family later that summer. Unbeknownst to Jenn, Brandon, now 24, had hatched a plot that involved him proposing to her during a scheduled stop at Niagara Falls, and had let her family in on the details. The weather was brutally hot and humid that day, and Jenn was experiencing violent morning sickness. Told they faced a five-hour wait for a ride under the falls, she knew there was no way she could endure it. After a “huge fight,” she convinced everyone to go to Toronto instead.

“It was a long quiet car ride,” she says. “ No one would talk to me, and I had no idea why it was such a big deal!”

Unfortunately, she felt no better the next morning when they made plans to go to the CN Tower. Rolling out of bed, she threw on some sweat pants, put her hair up and grudgingly followed everyone out the door. Once there, she had to excuse herself numerous times and finally said that they would have to go up to the top of the tower without her. Her mother, however, wouldn’t hear of it and practically dragged her onto the elevator.

Once there, they walked around a bit before her mom asked Jenn to help her with her camera. Seconds later, she heard Brandon call her name and turned around to find him on bended knee, ready to propose.

“I was completely surprised,” says Jenn. “Normally, I know what is going on around me at all times, and am very hard to surprise. This time they managed to catch me off guard! I was so happy, but I still give them grief about not telling me to shower and look nice that day.

“But it’s something we will never forget!”

Their daughter Rylee was born in March 2011, and three months before their wedding this past July they found out they were going to become parents for a second time.

Fortunately, Jenn says, she didn’t have to deal with morning sickness on the day of her wedding. It’s a good thing, too, because practically everything that could go wrong, did.

The covers for the chairs were wrong, one of the bridesmaids arrived late, stormy weather forced the ceremony indoors, and the DJ, who promised to be there for the ceremony, didn’t arrive until after dinner, clad not in formal attire but in grungy shorts.

In the end, says Jenn, none of that mattered. They got married, just like they planned, in front of the people who loved them the most.

Becoming more than friends, she says, was definitely worth the gamble.

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